Global Students Find Home Away From Home at Columbia

Each year at Convocation, the ceremony in which President Lee C. Bollinger and the deans of the College and Engineering officially welcome incoming undergraduates to Columbia, the leaders of the New Student Orientation Program (NSOP) parade the flags of every state and country represented in the two student bodies in celebration of the schools’ geographic — and by extension, cultural and religious — diversity.

Andrea Viejo ’14

Clemens Auersperg ’14

Shen Qui ’16

Lingzi Zhuang ’16

Onella Cooray ’14

Wangari Mungai ’14

Hamza Khan ’14

Pria Narsiman ’15

Gelila Bekele ’16

“The emphasis on the humanities and the Core is really important. It makes you a well-rounded person.” Hamza Khan ’14﻿

The College Class of 2017 includes students from 47 countries, bringing the number of international students and nations represented in the College in the 2013–14 academic year to 729 and 83, respectively. At the university level, Columbia recently was ranked fifth among all U.S. institutions for having the largest population of international students, according to a report by The Institute of International Education. Their ranks include those who are non-U.S. citizens and non-U.S. permanent residents who need a visa to enter the country, as well as U.S. citizens and permanent residents who went to school outside of America.

Despite the students’ range of backgrounds, their reasons for choosing the College fall under similar themes: admiration for the Core Curriculum and the school’s commitment to teaching liberal arts, and New York’s appeal as an inclusive, cosmopolitan city.

“The emphasis on the humanities and the Core is really important. It makes you a well-rounded person and lets you think in new ways,” says Hamza Khan ’14, from Lahore, Pakistan. “We didn’t have any kind of liberal arts education [in Pakistan]. It was very focused on the hard sciences and math.”

Khan, who is majoring in financial economics with a concentration in sustainable development, toured the campus prior to his senior year of high school while visiting relatives and cites his familiarity with New York City as an important factor in his decision. “I was comfortable with the city. If it was a city that was new to me, it might have been a different story,” he says. “Everyone in New York is pretty accepting and aware of differences.”

Like Khan, other students, including Pria Narsiman ’15, from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Andrea Viejo ’15, from Monterrey, Mexico, attribute their initial impetus for pursuing an undergraduate education in the United States to a dearth of liberal arts colleges in their own countries and elsewhere.

Narsiman, who was 5 when her family relocated from her native Sydney to Kuala Lumpur, researched colleges in the United Kingdom and Australia but ultimately focused on the U.S. “because it offers more breadth,” she says. “In Australia or the U.K., I would have had to decide what I wanted to do straight out of high school and would have only taken classes in that area.”

Viejo came to a similar realization: “Back home, I would have been forced to choose my academic track during freshman year — let’s say business or politics — and stick to those classes. I found it fascinating that [the College] offered me the opportunity to study the Koran, a text I would probably never be exposed to in Mexico, and music from around the world.”

Narsiman and Viejo had visited New York City only briefly prior to starting their undergraduate careers, yet for both, the Big Apple’s reputation as a city that embraces foreigners gave the College an edge over schools in college towns. “I wanted to live in a city because I’m from a big city in Australia and I live in a big city in Malaysia,” says Narsiman, who is pursuing majors in neuroscience and behavior and French and Francophone studies. “I really wanted to go somewhere diverse.”

Viejo, a political science and sociology major, echoes the sentiment and feels her decision is validated each time she goes to a Mexican restaurant or attends Catholic Mass in Spanish. “For me, it was location and the Core equally,” she says. “For an international student, New York City is very welcoming because it’s easy to find your niche.”

“For an international student, New York City is very welcoming because it’s easy to find your niche.”Andrea Viejo ’15

In describing their transitions to the College, international students speak of the same emotions and concerns an American peer might express: the simultaneous excitement and trepidation of being away from home for the first time; the task of building new social lives while staying in touch with family and friends back home; and balancing heavy course loads with co-curricular activities. International students, however, often face additional hurdles that may include extensive travel times and the culture shock that comes with new academic and cultural norms. For some, there’s also homesickness, the minutiae of purchasing a winter wardrobe for the first time and adjusting their palates to new flavors.

It took some time for Shen Qiu ’16, from Shanghai, to get used to professor-student dynamics at Columbia, which he says are very different from China. “Here you can talk to the professor during class and after class, and people are much more open to discussion,” he says. “In China, students think of teachers as being ‘higher’ than they are and are afraid of talking to teachers. Here, communication is facilitated by the free academic environment.”

But while they may find their professors more accessible, Qiu and his friend, fellow Shanghai native Lingzi Zhuang ’16, who transferred to the College after a year in Engineering, feel that they have had to work hard to bridge cultural differences with peers, particularly when it comes to casual interactions. Says Qiu, “When you are with a bunch of friends and they are talking about something that you have never heard of in popular culture, you sometimes feel isolated because you can’t get involved in the conversation.”

From the beginning, Zhuang felt at ease speaking English in academic settings but less so in social situations. “In the first few months, I felt uncomfortable,” he says. “It was a painful realization that I needed to make an effort to be understood.”

“Picking up on social nuances in terms of language and phrases” was a challenge early on for Onella Cooray ’14, from Colombo, Sri Lanka. “When people asked, ‘How are you?’ I’d respond with an actual ‘how’ before I caught on that it was another cultural ‘hi’ and that people don’t expect you to actually give an answer,” she says.

As a first-year, Cooray, who is pursuing concentrations in earth and environmental sciences and sustainable development, suffered a common ailment: homesickness. Part of her yearning stemmed from her distaste for campus food, which she found bland compared to the spice of Sri Lankan cuisine. “I got my mom to ship over some of our condiments and I would sneak them into the dining hall and douse all the food with chili paste to make it palatable,” recalls Cooray, who has mostly cooked for herself since her sophomore year.

Cooray’s homesickness has so subsided that she spent all of last summer in Morningside Heights. She and Zhuang were the student coordinators for the 2013 International Student Orientation Program (ISOP), a Columbia Student Affairs effort that takes place in the days leading up to NSOP. Begun in 2010, the program — which helps students transition to the U.S. and college life, and build community with one another — already has grown from 50 to about 100 students. Among other things, participants meet their academic advisers, attend sessions on American academic culture, are introduced to the Writing Center, explore New York City and can take advantage of a banking and cell phone fair.

ISOP was so central to Cooray’s transition to the College in 2010 that she volunteered the following two years as an orientation leader prior to taking on the role of coordinator. One of her fondest memories of the College, she says, was being greeted by ISOP orientation leaders when she checked into the Hartley lounge as an incoming first-year. “I had a clueless ‘no-idea-where-I-am-going’ look on my face,” she recalls. “It was really welcoming. I thought, ‘Wow, I’ve finally arrived.’“I definitely found it useful to move in earlier and then get to know a group of people,” adds Cooray, who says she has made some of her most meaningful college relationships during ISOP. “I feel if I hadn’t had the opportunity ISOP gave me, I would have been less able to cope socially.”

A positive ISOP experience also prompted Gelila Bekele ’16, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to partake in the program this year as an orientation leader. “It created a strong bond among international students that we still have,” says Bekele, who notes that the experience of being an international student in the College is powerful enough to kindle friendships among peers with different backgrounds. “We’re in the same boat. Even though some of my friends might be from South America or Europe, we still have something in common: the fact that we’re far away from home. [Other international students] you meet, especially during ISOP, become your family.”

“Home [is] not just a physical space now… It’s finding friends on campus with whose experiences I can relate.”Wangari Mungai ’14

As venues to connect with peers of common backgrounds and shared interests, student clubs and associations also provide settings for international students to build support networks. An active member of the Organization of Pakistani Students since his first year, Khan considers cultural clubs “a great way to meet people and build lasting relationships.

“You get to know other people who are dealing with the same problems and they can help you. Now I’m a senior and I can help freshmen coming in,” he says. “It’s a great community. We’re all really close and really good friends.”

Wangari Mungai ’14, an earth and environmental sciencemajor from Nairobi, Kenya, who was a student coordinator for ISOP in 2012, had never traveled outside of her country prior to starting her college career and was homesick her first year. The African Students Association (ASA), which she calls “a little home away from home,” helped her adapt.

“It’s definitely gotten easier through the years,” says Mungai, who occasionally gets together with fellow ASA members to cook her favorite meals. “It comes with figuring out other ways to think of home; it’s not just a physical space now. Home is being able to talk to my family. It’s finding friends on campus with whose experience I can relate. It’s thinking about home as something beyond a geographical space.”

Two Christian student groups,Columbia Faith & Action and the Columbia chapter of the VeritasForum, have given Zhuang “a family of friends who share the same faith and similar interests,” while Qiu notes that his involvement with Columbia Model United Nations in New York “has taught me a lot about the interpersonal protocol in American culture.”

Similarly, Clemens Auersperg ’14, a heavyweight rower from Linz, Austria, who is majoring in history, found that the camaraderie of belonging to a sports team and the support of Columbia University Athletics eased his transition. “When I arrived, I didn’t know anyone in New York, but being part of an athletics team, you immediately become friends with your teammates,” he says. “Those fellow freshmen are still my closest friends at Columbia.

“The older members on the team were really supportive and helpful when it came to which classes to choose and how to balance schoolwork with athletics, which is not always easy. Being a varsity athlete has many benefits; you have a program behind you that tries to help you in any way possible.”

More recently, support also has been added in the form of “International at Columbia,” a series of informal monthly gatherings of international students held in John Jay Lounge, complete with snacks. Run through Columbia’s International Students Programs and Services office, which was created in 2012, each session features upperclassmen facilitating a discussion of a topic relevant to life at Columbia and to the U.S. Topics have included dating and making friends on campus, and finding jobs and internships with a student visa.

In the spirit of giving back, some international students volunteer with the Global Recruitment Committee, which supports the Office of Undergraduate Admissions’ recruiting efforts by hosting students in their residence halls during Days on Campus, visiting high schools in their home countries during winter and summer breaks, and expanding the reach of the Alumni Representative Committee by interviewing prospective students in places where not many alumni live.

Every year, GRC members also handwrite congratulatory postcards to international students who have been offered admission and encourage recipients to email them with questions. The memory of receiving such a postcard prompted Mungai to join the GRC. “In that excitement of having been accepted to Columbia, a written postcard was a very personal touch,” she recalls. “When I heard about the GRC, I said, ‘Oh! Those are the people who write the postcards.’ I wanted to be part of that experience: to write postcards, to open my arms to international students who are not able to visit Columbia, to be a resource for them and to share my experience in the hope that it will make their experiences even better.”

Nathalie Alonso ’08, from Queens, is a freelance journalist and an editorial producer for LasMayores.com, Major League Baseball’s official Spanish language website. She writes “Student Spotlight” for CCT.